OTOH, the moon, Mars and the asteroids could be settled for relatively little expense, in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the expense as an interstellar voyage. If you're going to use Von Neuman machines for anything, THAT is the way to go.

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Hence the Hawking quote I posted...

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... is absurd, because Hawking is assuming that there's no location anywhere in the solar system suitable for human habitation and therefore extrasolar planets are the best logical alternative.

Hawking is simply wrong. The moon has sufficient resources for long term (if not permanent) colonization. Mars does also, especially if you project human expansion on a timescale long enough to allow for teraforming. Either location could be made permanently viable by harnessing the resources readily accessible in the bodies of our own solar system, many of which would be cheaper and easier to exploit than the miniscule cache of resources that exist in the Earth's crust. Simply put, with or without Von Neuman devices, if we spent half as much time developing the solar system as we spent on Earth, humanity could expand a fully developed and viable civilization across all eight planets and all 200 moons and dwarf planets.

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The excerpt was from a much longer quote, and he's completely right...while we will no doubt make use of our solar system, it makes much more sense to "seed" the galaxy for our survival and as I have pointed out, it can be done in a reasonable time on the cosmological scale.

You could also be a little less conservative and the seeding of other galaxies wouldn't even take much more time than the galaxy...at least in terms of launching the probes, settling would take much longer. Explanation:

The excerpt was from a much longer quote, and he's completely right...while we will no doubt make use of our solar system, it makes much more sense to "seed" the galaxy for our survival

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Seeding the galaxy is not NECESSARY for our survival, thus doing so for survival's sake makes no sense. It would be like moving to a desert island to avoid your neighbor's dog.

Hawking is incorrect. The solar system bodies and their accessible resources are not only a viable choice, they are also a logical first step that would precede any attempt at interstellar transportation anyway. Thus, by the time we are in any position to BEGIN to colonize beyond the solar system, we will no longer NEED to.

You could also be a little less conservative and the seeding of other galaxies wouldn't even take much more time than the galaxy...

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On the timeline and scale we're talking about, it would actually be more feasible to refuel the sun than to even ATTEMPT to colonize other galaxies.

You've been beating that tired old drum for years, Decky. "Space colonization is stupid because I don't want to live in a space colony." The fact is even if only a tenth of a percent of all humans alive today were both willing and capable of doing so we would have 7 million volunteers, from which we could chose ONLY the most talented and psychologically stable 2%.

Nobody's asking YOU to go. In fact, I think the colonists would all be be alot more comfortable if you didn't.

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If we both live long enough to prove the point you can buy me a drink as settlement of the debt. A cosmopolitan in fact. And for that last comment, I have to say it was uncalled for.

The excerpt was from a much longer quote, and he's completely right...while we will no doubt make use of our solar system, it makes much more sense to "seed" the galaxy for our survival

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Seeding the galaxy is not NECESSARY for our survival, thus doing so for survival's sake makes no sense. It would be like moving to a desert island to avoid your neighbor's dog.

Hawking is incorrect. The solar system bodies and their accessible resources are not only a viable choice, they are also a logical first step that would precede any attempt at interstellar transportation anyway. Thus, by the time we are in any position to BEGIN to colonize beyond the solar system, we will no longer NEED to.

You could also be a little less conservative and the seeding of other galaxies wouldn't even take much more time than the galaxy...

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On the timeline and scale we're talking about, it would actually be more feasible to refuel the sun than to even ATTEMPT to colonize other galaxies.

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In the long term even if there were no disasters through cosmological timescale in our solar system, I don't see mankind as an exponentially growing species as able to remain self-sustaining, therefore even the solar system will be outstripped.

The flow of 'emigration' would only be two-way initially. Saying that humans can survive in low gravity is not the same as having a good quality of life. We have no idea how it would affect the heart, the skeleton, muscles, psychology, fertility. I could go on but you get the picture. The psychological strain alone could make settling somewhere like the moon a non-starter. Why live in a tin can there when you're looking at a beautiful blue marble every day?

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I've pointed out ways around this with human settlement of the solar system then galaxy...firstly, in the short term timescale we're talking about: 2030-2040 We're likely to have much more advanced exoskeletons than we have now, which have already made trial runs in Afghanistan. Secondly, nanotech by this period could solve numerous problems with wasting etc .

Psychologically, the human brain can be kept occupied in ways never dreamed of by most people in the 20th century...from interactive virtual realities both for training and socialization, to the simpler method of creating the right size crew and the right chemistry.

Long term...I suggested bypassing space travel altogether, large spaceships might be already obsolete by 2050, carrying DNA and stored humans in databanks would eliminate long duration space travel and be more efficient on many levels.

In the long term even if there were no disasters through cosmological timescale in our solar system, I don't see mankind as an exponentially growing species as able to remain self-sustaining, therefore even the solar system will be outstripped.

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Assuming humanity IS an exponentially growing species; the growth curve is expected to flatten out and eventually reverse within the next sixty years.

But that's a problem for the distant future -- 2 or 3 millenia from now -- by which time the solar-system spanning humanity will be able to begin to think about expanding to neighboring star systems using technology they already have. But that's not going to happen until humans have become accustomed to living and working in space as a matter of course.

carrying DNA and stored humans in databanks would eliminate long duration space travel and be more efficient on many levels.

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More efficient than WHAT? You're not going to conduct a manned Mars mission by shipping a bunch of frozen embryos and cloning the crew on arrival. There are NO circumstances where that scenario is in any way more efficient than simply loading up a trained crew and flying them there.

carrying DNA and stored humans in databanks would eliminate long duration space travel and be more efficient on many levels.

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More efficient than WHAT? You're not going to conduct a manned Mars mission by shipping a bunch of frozen embryos and cloning the crew on arrival. There are NO circumstances where that scenario is in any way more efficient than simply loading up a trained crew and flying them there.

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For interplanetary missions that might be the case for awhile, but, efficiency is a huge selling point of the EIS starship/probes. Aside from cost factor, the fact is food and life supporting supplies, crew space, fuel for the payload, are wasteful for spaceflight if you don't NEED them.

Where would they be sent? I'm assuming no instant human kits would be sent at random, which brings about the possibility that a generational shipload of human babies are created in a hostile environment, possibly as the new lab experiments for schoolkids on the destination planet.

carrying DNA and stored humans in databanks would eliminate long duration space travel and be more efficient on many levels.

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More efficient than WHAT? You're not going to conduct a manned Mars mission by shipping a bunch of frozen embryos and cloning the crew on arrival. There are NO circumstances where that scenario is in any way more efficient than simply loading up a trained crew and flying them there.

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For interplanetary missions that might be the case for awhile, but, efficiency is a huge selling point of the EIS starship/probes.

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LOL no it isn't.

Aside from cost factor

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There is nothing aside from the cost factor. There's no return on investment, therefore there's no incentive to invest anything. The only interstellar probes that are feasible at this point are very small ones that have at least one other secondary purpose, like the Voyager probes that return useful data on a target of interest before being catapulted out of the solar system towards the stars.

More efficient than WHAT? You're not going to conduct a manned Mars mission by shipping a bunch of frozen embryos and cloning the crew on arrival. There are NO circumstances where that scenario is in any way more efficient than simply loading up a trained crew and flying them there.

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For interplanetary missions that might be the case for awhile, but, efficiency is a huge selling point of the EIS starship/probes.

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LOL no it isn't.

Aside from cost factor

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There is nothing aside from the cost factor. There's no return on investment, therefore there's no incentive to invest anything. The only interstellar probes that are feasible at this point are very small ones that have at least one other secondary purpose, like the Voyager probes that return useful data on a target of interest before being catapulted out of the solar system towards the stars.

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It's hilarious, even the title of the video was called cheap exploration.

When you amplify it out to galaxy exploration, the benefits become clear. I don't believe there is a single scientist who'd agree with your position. I'll still say it's almost inevitable this is the way to explore the galaxy. Unless we discover shortcuts through space or warp drives, the default most efficient method will be the one used.

Where would they be sent? I'm assuming no instant human kits would be sent at random, which brings about the possibility that a generational shipload of human babies are created in a hostile environment, possibly as the new lab experiments for schoolkids on the destination planet.

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Well there may be a pre-set search pattern, parameters and so on, but I'm also betting there will be a strong element of AI, especially if it occurs in the next 30-40 years. I'm not quite sure we'll be ready for galaxy travel in any form till after 2050.

Unfortunately while it is a better way to travel, a seed ship is probably more likely to fail than succeed, so it'll be important to really explore thoroughly with non-seed probes ahead of time. The von neumann probes of all types will have a high failure rate which is why it's important that they will be launched and replicate in large numbers. Ethically I can deal with copies of humans, especially ones that don't have their brains uploaded dying, better than a crew on a traditional ship in some sort of hyper sleep or generational starship.

You'll have to read earlier in the thread and watch the videos to understand what i mean probably.

Simply, and EIS ship will have either embroyos, or more likely DNA which will likely be used to clone a copy of you. After that, emerging exponential technologies like brain uploading/downloading (circa 2025-2050 tech) will be used to rejoin the body, creating an exact copy of you down to your thoughts and memories. Think "syncording" from Arnold's 6th Day.

The easiest, cheapest and fastest spaceflight in the world is the one that never leaves the planning stages. You haven't provided a coherent reason yet why any mission more expensive than that would be beneficial to anyone.

When you amplify it out to galaxy exploration, the benefits become clear.

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There wouldn't BE any benefits in that case since the people who launch the probe will have entered the fossil record by the time the probe gets anywhere interesting, and their evolutionary descendants will join them by the time anyone on Earth finds out about it, assuming they ever do.

I don't believe there is a single scientist who'd agree with your position.

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The position that seeding the universe with human DNA on million-year-long fully automated spaceflights has no concrete scientific or monetary value to anyone currently alive or likely to be alive within the next thousand years?

I think I'll let the scientists speak for themselves on this one.

I'll still say it's almost inevitable this is the way to explore the galaxy.

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It isn't, because we're not going to explore the galaxy until we're finished exploring our own solar system IF THEN. We'll have human beings born and raised on space colonies out to ten generations before exploring the galaxy becomes anything more than a sci-fi pipe dream. Otherwise, you're basically in the position of a Polynesian fisherman proposing a moon mission using a canoe strapped to a hot air balloon.